Siguenza’s long (44 years in the making) ‘Weekend With Picasso’

Herbert Siguenza (photographed during the initial 2010 workshop staging of "A Weekend With Pablo Picasso") will bring the solo show back to San Diego Rep as a full production in the theater's 2013-14 season.
— Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune

Herbert Siguenza (photographed during the initial 2010 workshop staging of "A Weekend With Pablo Picasso") will bring the solo show back to San Diego Rep as a full production in the theater's 2013-14 season.
— Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune

Together the troupe’s written and performed full-length plays like the semi-autobiographical “The Mission” and a satire about the San Diego-Tijuana region called “Culture Clash in Bordertown.” They’ve adapted Aristophanes’ “The Birds” and finished Broadway composer Frank Loesser’s unfinished musical. Then, there are the sketch compilation shows like “Culture Clash in AmeriCCa.”

For his new play, billed as “flamboyant and provocative,” Siguenza has created an intriguing premise — Picasso paints a rush order over a weekend at his villa “La Californie” in 1957 France. The audience is treated like unwelcome guests in his studio. Layered on top of this narrative are proclamations about Picasso’s art theories, his ideas about women as either goddesses or doormats, his reasons for painting the anti-war provocation “Guernica,” and a little-known anecdote about how Picasso almost gave up painting.

“Weekend” has only a few comic elements: Expect bathing, painting, dancing and playtime much like what appealed to the young Siguenza in Duncan’s photo book. Siguenza uses text from Picasso’s lectures and interviews and slides of the artist’s paintings, which may sound like Siguenza channeled Picasso for a gallery talk.

“There’s a fine line between doing a lecture and being told a story,” Siguenza said. “I don’t want it to be academic. I want it to be personal.”

It’s the kind of performance he hopes to carry to nontraditional spaces.

“I think it’s gonna be a piece that not only other theaters might want but art institutions. They would know what I’m talking about a little more. The concepts I’m putting out there are very complex, about (Picasso’s) whole way of seeing, of why and how he invented cubism,” said Siguenza, perhaps betraying a visual arts bias: He was trained in printmaking at what is now the California College of the Arts in Oakland.

For those who expect only laughs from the Siguenza brand, the theater artist said “Weekend” is a foray into being more “Picassian.”

“I’m restless like Picasso. I think I have a lot in common with him. Like he said, he’s gonna die trying new things. You can’t be doing the same thing over and over.”